MEMP’IS

BOOK SIX – “MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE”

(Sunday {Venuday}, January 7, 2035, and After)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN – “TEDDY BEAR”

The outcries of his superiors retreating as he trudges up the steps to Graceland's attic, Eric Ice glances sharply from side to side, alert for danger… and for opportunity. By the dried mud on the stairs, he gathers that the Wabash Cannonball inundation rose to the attic floor, perhaps higher, and he adjusts his expectations downwards. For a few moments he'd hesitated - the attic or Lisa Marie's bedroom again, with its…things… and the remaining policeboat scrunched up against the blown-out wall? Pinpricks had rippled across his neck - not entirely unpleasant - he tugged one of the red bloodsuckers away, firing his skimmer at its companions blanketing the wall.

"Heyy!" a voice had answered, and the old, filth-encrusted television above the things and fungus-encrusted bed flickered on. It was the Fonz… Henry Winkler, two forty-eight a milliliter at forty percent, remembers Eric, whose faculty for Fex Market quotes is eerily sharp… he and those other guys, no-counts, seemed to be gathered in a military draft office eighty (or, in actuality, only sixty) years gone.

He'd raised the skimmer again. "What's good for the King's good for the Ice-man," he'd said to himself, blasting away, but… instead of exploding the old wall-mount idiot box… he'd only damaged it, causing the sounds and images to flicker from one midlist Hollywood specimen to another… Robert Conrad, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas.

"Keb it!" he'd decided, turning to the attic, taking steps two-at-a-time once he'd noticed the shriveled, almost skeletal, severed limb on the third step. Man or phibe, it gives Ice the jitters, and he beats feet until spying something else drifting softly on a carpet of air, three steps from the top. A… peacock feather? Impressed, Eric bends down, picking it up, and, when he stands erect, again, the King's dark attic shimmers, as through a dark, green veil. Far and away, unobstructed by iron or roses, a single window casts soft, dusky light in rippling, honeycomb shafts that circle a glowing, pulsing lump not six feet from the policeman.

A… fex? Up here?

Eric Ice convulses with girlish giggles. So - the King had crawled up thisaways, to take a dump on the floor. Sick duck, taking a fex up here, but why not… it was his own house, after all, with him the King. "I am the Lizard King," Eric chortles, "…I can do anything!" (But that hadn't been Elvis, it'd been this other guy who'd kicked off even younger… a collectors' item, too, tho' not quite so valuable.)

So much fex, so little time…

So Eric takes the final two steps, and stands, swaying, in Graceland's attic - taking the deep breaths of a pilgrim on a remote mountain… an explorer in Tibet or Japan, as he imagines himself. Triple-J had been deeply into the lore and practices of the Orient… especially Islam. This old zook whom the Trouble Factory had rousted when Ice was on patrols for John Crum before the bad thing… a political, a troublemaker, human fex… he'd complained that Jates had made Islam respectable, again, after certain apocryphal troubles that had transpired before the K'ball. "If it ain't in the Vitriopaedia," Eric had said, "it ain't so!" giving this Professor a good pummeling, before they'd sent him off to Stimwood, as he remembered, or, maybe, the swamp. Anyway, Eric fairly shines with self-esteem in Graceland's attic, radiating waves of pride and breathing deeply like a wise old man of Paradise, or Nirvana (or the sun)… peace, serenity… and…

Dust!

Ice sneezes, and so is brought him back to the Now. It's Graceland's attic, after all, and thick with dust (not the traditional sort from sloughed-off skin but, rather, toxic and cold-blooded dust) and the shimmering light from the window… like the eye in the pyramid still on EastAmi money, Eric sniggers… illuminates dozens, hundreds of boxes and, as he now perceives, dozens of fex on the floor…

Of course… and the policeman's brows knot, hardening… maybe it hadn't been Elvis taking a fex up here, maybe they aren't even human. Do phibes fex in the woods? Worthless… worthless phibe fex!

Negative thinking… negative thinking…

Think of the mountain… the money...

Somewhere down below, there are screams, muffled bedlam… the fweek! of a prancer. Eric blinks and starts walking across cracked, mudmottled planks… movement the antidote for negative thought… and grasps one of the dozens of tiki torches leaning against the attic's sloping walls. A quick pass with his Flamo (license #2292-51-93820) and, now, he can see… beyond the boxes and more fex, there are clothesracks and busted-up machinery, a dusty mirror and, in a corner, almost hidden, something round and gold that tugs at his pawnbrokerish memory. A gold… record…

He reaches down, picks it up… it's warm to the touch, there might have been writing on it, once, but it's smeared, unrecognizable. It won't fit in his pocket, and Eric has no ditty bag or Reason's purse… he'll have to do something about that… meanwhile, he stuffs the disk down the front of his pants. Have to be worth something, to somebody.

Strutting, now, a limping colossus astride the globe… kebbin' Magellan! of undiscovered fex… he ventures out into his new domain. Pain radiates upwards - the Sergeant looks down and perceives the slow trickle of blood over the top of his shoe where the phibe tried to rip his ankle off... it seems to be losing colour, the blood, a grayish sludge oozing slowly as if from the stigmata of a ghost. "Kebbin' Jesse Garon," he snorts to the mirror, almost expecting something to answer back.

Some of the clothesracks seem full of old, dowdy dresses (and Eric remembers that Elvis, who never threw anything away, kept all his mother's old clothes and, often, climbed up into this very attic to commune with childhood ghosts). "Fexxer!" But there's also some stiff, filth-encrusted Vegas capes and jumpsuits somebody will certainly pay for, if he can find a way to get them out. No solution leaps to mind, so, for the present, he just lets his beautiful, artist's fingers ripple through the zippered pockets, recovering a pair of cracked, pre-Jatesist sunglasses, a few Coca-Coca bottlecaps and, even, a flask of dried Ex-Lax... a partial denture and a comb which he holds up, squinting, perceiving several hairs that he can have tested and, maybe, sell on the Fex Market.

"Hot diggity!"

Reckless with greed, he plunges his hand back into a zippered pocket and something pinches - he withdraws it quickly, the tip of a hypodermic dangling from his thumb...

Keb! Keb! Keb!

He turns, noticing more boxes; stacks of what must've been newspapers or magazines, once, under all that mud. A family of ceramic poodles - two erect, three tipped over (one of these broken at the neck, another shattered into four pieces). Sidling towards what, he thinks, must be the south, he kicks aside innumerable toy metal cars and trucks, finally confronting a nest of mildewed horse-things… saddles, whips, bridles, currycombs. (Could those fex on the attic floor be horse fex? he thinks, perversely, then wipes the negative thought from his mind… irrational thinking is negative thinking, negative thinking…)

No way those fex on the attic floor could've come from horses - horses would never have been able to negotiate the King's attic staircase, wide as it is. No way…

Eric Ice turns, walks westwards back through the racks of musty old clothes, reaching into more random pockets... more cautiously, now... recovering nothing but muddy guitar picks, dice, some dried flowers. Well, most people don't go round putting fex in their pockets, do they?… "I've got fex on the brain," the policeman tells himself ruefully, rubbing a spot on the back of his neck where one of the red things bit. It still itches, though pleasantly. He opens a box - old, musty books, almost dissolved to pulp, they are… "The Shroud of Turin", "Psycho-Kinetics", "You Are All Sanpaku"… ugh! (That there should be bugs, and are not, is less comforting than ominous.) Another box of rotting purple scarves, another box of Christmas lights and ornaments, finally a box of damp, stinking teddy bears… when he was young and lithe, the King sang in Memphis and Jackson and Little Rock and a hundred other towns, and the girls threw teddy bears at him. Elvis never threw anything away.

The little, black-beady eyes of the teddy bears seem to mock his quest. Eric turns away, and hears a noise, a scuttling. A rat? (Of course not, all undrowned rodents must've been killed off and eaten by phibes decades ago.)

Nonetheless he whirls, drawing the skimmer with his right hand, balancing the blazing tiki torch across his left forearm. And laughs aloud - pushed into the deepest attic crevices are dozens of shot-out televisions. Well that's something he has in common with the King: contempt for the Fonzies, Spittas and Paul Parchettes of this world, and a love of guns. A few busted screens have been wiped clean of mud - he poses, watching his reflection therein, shattered into thousands of leering fragments. Phibes can't reach him, up here in the King's cathedral of sloping walls and memory… the attic is a kebbin' shrine, a realm of purity. There's even a scripture on the attic floor - face down, unspoiled… he can read the book's title upside down: "The Power of Positive Thinking". He picks it up without remark, though he is shaking with hilarity at the kebbin' irony of it all. The pages are whole… almost… Eric Ice opens it at random and reads…

"I am looking up at a clear blue sky, and there is no mud up there. There is only sunshine, and I never saw any mud that could stand against sunshine. Soon it will be dried up, and then you will be able to move your machinery and start all over again."

Then, something sharp strikes his ankle, still sore and dripping achromatic blood from the attack in the river…

Eric frowns, lifts a heavy Trouble Factory shoe. It's one of those little model cars, still moving… circling, as if resentful that he'd kicked it away a while back. Some strong, kebbin' battery, to be able to move like that after so many years, Ice thinks… tossing the book aside… it's quick, and it's sharp. Quick as a rat, but... as it lunges towards the policeman's foot, again... Eric is quicker, and he stomps it flat. More old-fashioned, genuine plastic than metal, it gives off an unholy, animate deathsqueal…

And Eric sees more of the little fexxers, circling the attic. Closing in!

It's kebbin' hot up here…

It stinks…

Negative thinking! Eric focuses on the mudline two thirds up the sloping walls of the attic and composes himself, thinking positive thoughts. Fresh, mountain air… kung-fu fighting. Banging a waitress caught slipping caffeine pills into the zooks' herbal teas for tips -turning a fifteen proof Dick Clark, bought at three-thirty, for five-twenty to those kebbin' Chinese…

Why is his hand so kebbin' gray?

Some of the grimy religious magazines piled up under Graceland's eaves seem to breathe in unison with the policeman, too… swelling and sighing, shaking specks of crusted mud from their covers with low, rasping, death-rattle gasps…

Eric backs away, feeling the lascivious prickle of thingbites across his neck. The warm. gold disk throbs against his genitalia, throbbing back. Maybe the attic wasn't such a good idea.

There's a busted-up guitar leaning against more soggy, crusty boxes - strings in disarray, but it's playing somehow, of its own accord. Nothing recognizable, not music, even, just soft, dissonant chords, noise… but Eric backs off, anyway, then fairly leaps when there's a furnace-blast behind him, and the reposing tiki torches burst into flames. There must be a hundred of the kebbin' things, and… slumped against the wall as they are… the policeman thinks: Fire!

"Hey!" Eric calls out. "Hey, you! I know you're up here - what th'keb you think you're doin', man? Place ain't so wet that it couldn't go up in smoke. Hey!…"

Nobody answers.

"This ain't funny," Eric Ice warns his unseen adversaries. "You don't want to mess with me, hey… I can keb you up. I'm a killer… really… an' I ain't talking Jerry Lee kebbin' Lewis, no Jerry Lewis, neither. You hear?"

There's a last, strangled chord and, then, only a silence - in which the attic itself seems to breathe along with the policeman. And then, strings of blue and white Christmas lights in an open box sputter on and off and , finally, explode in blue and white flashes. Now, there's a cordite reek in the attic air to season the heavy, dark smoke from the smoldering timbers that the tiki torches touch…

"Keb!" the policeman swears, just before the rustling begins…

Eric turns, watching the King's capes and jumpsuits slither off the clothing racks and slouch across the floor, joined by Gladys Presley's musty old dresses, then the clomp! clomp! of blue suede loafers and Beatle boots tumbling out of boxes on the attic's north side… all of them seemingly desperate to escape the flames…

Eric hears a soft plop! behind him - turns, skimmer raised. One of the King's raggedy, putrescent teddy bears has fallen out of a box, struggling erect… black, beady eyes radiating with what seems like congealed hate. Another falls out, then another… they are not falling, Eric realizes, taking a step backwards, they're leaping!

The busted guitar resumes its random, jagged solo… louder, now… and, somewhere behind a bank of rapidly emptying clothesracks, a stringless bass and a dented saxophone swell the cacophony. The shot-out televisions, piled in awkward pyramids, ignite into sighs and screams, jagged, diagonal lightflashes…

Another tiny Corvette bumps Eric's ankle, painfully, and the policeman kicks it away.

The black and white noise and signals of the televisions seem to be trying to coalesce into something… a face, perhaps, or an image of Elvis with Ed Sullivan, or in Vegas. A box of pink and purple scarves tumbles over, and the scarves begin to snake across the attic floor, beneath a cloud of increasingly acrid, brown smoke…

Teddy bears, by the dozens, are hopping out of boxes, waddling towards the encircled policeman. Eric trains his skimmer on the foremost and plugs it in a vaporizing puff of reeking soot, but there are forty more behind it… four hundred more behind them!… some even with red hearts sewn into their fake fur.

It's a teddy bears' picnic, the policeman realizes, and I'm the entrée…

Blue and white blazes from more boxes of Christmas lights intensify and Ice sidesteps the approach of a crawling, gray and yellow polka-dotted frock, off the rack…

There is more chaotic noise from the rooms below, and the walls are shuddering, as if under siege. Graceland 's rooftimbers are, by now, engulfed in billowing orange and lavender pyrotechnics - the conflagration elongated by the swampwater trapped in this ancient wood for more than twenty years....

And the stairwell is filling with flapping, sighing religious magazines.

When the first teddy bear mounts his leg, Eric almost laughs… this is no tiger, come to rip him up, tear him up, no wolf… just an eager, slobbery hound dog of a toy. When the second starts crawling up the other leg, the policeman snatches it, almost bemused, even staring into the blank, black beads for a moment, trying to read the inanimate motivation in the trifle's eyes…

"Teach you to keb with the Trouble Factory," he admonishes the toy, flexing his fingers (and favoring the needle-pricked thumb) before ripping into the soft, plush belly to rip the guts out of the damn thing, teach it who's the bossman up here. A searing fire - not pain, not quite pleasure - consumes his fist up to the elbow, and Eric begins to shake, frenetically, to dislodge the devouring green horde from his arm. Hell-flies creep up his shoulder while, beneath, the first of the teddy bears sinks its fangs into his knee… others are climbing, climbing towards his groin.

The policeman screams…

Beneath the floor, Chester Aspid hollers back!

The green flies and wormthings swarming out of the King's old clothes, hone in on teddy bear wounds, burrow beneath the collector's skin - sopping up flesh, muscle and gristle, eating Eric Ice alive and excreting him whole, like worm-casings over still-twitching bones. They devour and defecate the gold record, too, and a gold, liquid sheaf flows across the collector's root - making a perfect genital deathmask; there is hardly any pain, now, only liquefaction. The policeman is becoming fex, himself, under a comforter of blank-eyed teddy bears… a diseased, runny fex, to be sure.

His white, polished skeleton still erect (no doubt thinking positive thoughts in its skeletal, Jatesian way), the dross that had been Eric Ice seeps through the floorboards and drips through the cracks in the ceiling below, soiling, spattering…